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Tuesday, 14 January 2014

Tapestry of Grace Tuesday {flexibility and glossaries}

I am going to be writing posts, some weeks, that relate more specifically to Tapestry of Grace. There is a MASSIVE number of people out there who use this curriculum, and it's always helpful to share ideas and thoughts about how you use a curriculum.

I will try and also incorporate a general principle that may help others - whether in school, or in life generally. So, please don't skip over these posts, just because they don't seem to be relevant! You may be pleasantly surprised that it may help you in some way!

Today, I want to add an element to my workbooks. Unfortunately, I will not, at this time, be ACTUALLY adding it. I neglected to think about it BEFORE putting the workbooks together, sadly. Instead, I plan on keeping these pages neatly in a file, and will add them to the back of the workbook after it's completed. Then, I can add it in, in the correct weeks, for the next unit.

So, what did I miss??

Well, it relates to something I did not even know about until last year, when we did Year 4.

It's the printable glossaries - of the "people" covered, and the "vocabulary" covered. You will find these lists in the "weekly overview" pages of your weekplan.

You can see above, there are "people" listed for Upper Grammar to Rhetoric, and the "vocabulary" is only for the Grammar levels.

In previous years, I didn't really do much with this part of the curriculum. We maybe had a quick look, and discussed them. Ok, so that IS doing something, but nothing on paper. When I was told about the GLOSSARIES, however, a whole new concept was opened up. These basically become a handy reference booklet about the vocabulary related to your weekplan, and about the people you are studying. It's a simple reference, but handy, nonetheless.

I bound them just like my workbooks. These are now ready to be used through the whole of Year 1.

The people glossary is different to the vocabulary glossary. This is simply one whole glossary, with all the people for the year listed alphabetically. There is no division for weeks.

However, the vocabulary glossary is divided both by weeks, and by learning level - lower and upper grammar. Each section has the words listed alphabetically.

I am sure there are numerous ways to use this resource, but here's how I decided to use it.

For the grammar students, I asked them to pick some vocabulary words which interested them. Then, they had the choice of copying out, as a copywork exercise, the definition in the glossary, or they could write something they had learnt about those words from our reading that week.

With my youngest TOG student, Susie, she chose "Nile River" as her subject. I sat with her, discussing what she had learnt. Then, I wrote the sentences she dictated to me, using her vocabulary words, which she then copied onto a notebooking page.

Then, Daniel chose to copy the section about "hippopotami".

Beth chose the subject of the creatures found in Egypt, and wrote a sentence about each. You can see her page below.

If you look at the list in the week plan page, you will see she chose one of the lower grammar words, which are also suggested to be looked at by upper grammar students. However, in the glossary, more words are covered,which you would expect to find in that week's studies. I let them choose their words from the glossary, rather than only from the list in the week plan. .

As there were no "people" in the Week 1 section, Josh did not have to work on that. It's quite possible that he may not do that as a separate subject, in notebooking format, as his people may be covered elsewhere in his work load. However, we may choose to do one person a week as a "highlight" person. It would certainly be a good way for anyone to study characters through history - do a notebooking page on one person per period of history covered. It could even be a way of doing all your history studies - notebooking about characters in each historical era, and then as an offshoot you could study the way of life and current events surrounding that character.

You will see in the first picture, the older levels are to do a time line, instead of vocabulary. We will be starting that this week, having not done so in the first cycle, as the children were all younger. I plan to work on it with my oldest, Josh, and get him to present it to the others so we can discuss the characters in that week. I will write a post about the Timeline next week.

I think a valuable lesson, learnt by me, and equally valid for anyone, is this. Don't stress if you find you have to make changes in how you home school. Indeed, don't stress if you have to make changes in life, at all! Sometimes things come up that we don't expect, which require tweaking, or adding in of extra activities. I forgot about the glossaries, and so didn't add in any pages in my workbook to use for that. IT DOESN'T MATTER!! I can add them in, as one section, once we have finished unit 1. IT will be easier that way, than taking apart the whole workbook, and slotting the sheets in the right place. I am pretty likely to do damage to it, in the process!! So, they can wait to be added in. I now know I need to add them into the next workbook, and I plan to make a planning sheet for my workbooks, for this purpose - not to forget the next time! It's ok to make "mistakes", and better still, it's good to learn from them, and improve because of them.

So, there you have it. Another element of our Tapestry of Grace work.

Oh, for any TOG users who haven't discovered the glossaries (although, you are all probably far more sensible than I am, and found them yourselves...by looking through your curriculum thoroughly...), they are in The Loom. Which, of course you already know, right?